


Lost Moon

by Shinigamibutter



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Alternative Werewolf Lore, Angst, Flashbacks, Jooheon-centric, Love, M/M, Magical Tattoos, Memory Alteration, Safehouses, Tragedy, Unethical Experimentation, memory recovery, moon magic, speed writing, that farm life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2020-03-09 02:00:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18907210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shinigamibutter/pseuds/Shinigamibutter
Summary: Jooheon has lost everything but the moon.





	Lost Moon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CrazyJ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrazyJ/gifts).



> Well...It's all CrazyJ's fault ok? They were reading X Clan and commenting, got an image, and then I got an idea. See their fault. So don't blame me.

With a gasp and a start Jooheon woke, his whole body sore and no idea how he'd gotten where he was. Actually with no idea where he was or what he was doing there, and more startlingly naked. Not that he could see his nakedness behind his closed eyelids. But he could certainly feel it in the way he felt every single blade of grass against him. Many in uncomfortable places. It was wet, coarse, and itchy under his skin but he didn’t feel any insects on him. Which told him it was either late in the night or early in the morning. 

It was a struggle to open his eyes to find out. Each eyelid felt weighted, stuck, a prison on his face with a darkness beyond. There was pain everywhere when he was finally able to tear them open, his lashes sticking together in clumps obscuring his vision. His arms leaden as he tried to lift them to stop the impediment of his vision. The very nerves of his fingertips felt raw when they finally shifted against the ground. Nails raking into the dirt and grass beneath them. Fists clenching, making him gasp with pain.

Time seemed to float about him, wavering in the air with a feeling of foreboding of what he’d find when he got himself together. Still, he struggled on wiggling his toes against the sharp jolts and spasms of pain that raced up his legs and along his spine. Uncurling his fingers and lifting an arm, even though it felt like it might break at the socket. Brittle, that’s how he felt when he finally found himself sitting up vision fully restored. Time started again with the sense that everything was broken. 

Jooheon wasn’t sure what that thought meant as he looked down at his body. There were no wounds, no marks, and nothing truly broken. Except maybe his mind as he couldn’t recall what he’d been doing, where he’d been, where he was, who he was outside of this moment. It was all gone. His life a blur of broken and jumbled pieces that didn’t make sense as he tried to think of what led him to this moment. And along with what was missing came a hollow ache. For something he’d lost, something outside himself. 

It took longer still to find his bearings. He was in a field that looked as if it hadn’t been worked in a few months. Overgrown with weeds around the obvious vegetables that were close to harvest. In the distance there stood a house, unkempt like the field that might have once been a garden. It looked abandoned, or maybe the residents were sleeping. But that wasn’t the feeling he got as he stared at it long and hard, debating if there would be help there. His memories fogging over as he recalled time long since passed with his parents.

Having memories at all, even if they stopped at the age of sixteen was a comfort as he looked up at the sky. Something was missing, he could feel it in his bones as he stared at the blanket of stars searching for it. The moon, it was a new moon he realized as he felt tears prick at his eyes. He looked down only to spot a tattoo on his ankle that wasn’t in his few remaining memories. It was of the moon cycle the crescent moon stood in the middle with the other cycles to either side in threes. 

Seeing it sent a sudden wave of pain through him, intense and wrenching. It drew an anguished cry from his throat. It was raw, painful and caused the tears to start cascading down his cheeks. The stars above him were all wrong as an image of more tattoos flitted before his mind’s eye. Gone before he could even register what they were, who they belonged to. The pain lingering in the back of his heart but kindling a need to get up, to move, to live at the same time. 

So he did. Moving towards the house that the closer he got to he could tell was abandoned. Was left as it was in a hurry, obvious from the scuffs on the floor to the fading tire tracks in the drive. The front door was unlocked and no one was home. It smelled musty and dust covered everything with a fine layer. Each room was bare save for the sparse necessary furniture of bedrooms and living rooms. The cabinets in the kitchen were fully stocked with foods that wouldn’t go bad. So was the pantry. The stove ran on firewood and the lights were all candles.

There was only one kind of house like this and Jooheon knew it but he found himself in disbelief all the same when he realized. He had found a safe house. The clothes in one of the rooms looked like they had been made for him, they made him wonder. He wondered more about the six other rooms stocked with clothes and no belongings. He wondered why a house like this would exist. More important still, he wondered why he was there. Why he had been in the remains of the garden naked and alone. 

Answers weren’t forth coming in the following days as he decided to settle into the house. Exploring every inch of it only to find no personal touches. No car in the garage and nothing more than tools or the means to making a living off the land without modern society. For a day or two he’d thought of leaving, he’d thought of trying to find other people. But something kept him there as he fixed up the garden and did what he could for the land. Did things he wasn’t sure when he learned or where. 

He tried to think on it. Tried so hard to think on it that he’d catch glimpses of memories that would leave him shivering. There were only flashes of smoke, fire, guns, and too many men. But somehow not enough men, there was an ache he felt in his soul whenever he thought that. A fleeting glance at his tattoo and he always found himself nearly in tears. An anguish he couldn’t place a name to filling him up to the point of breaking. But he couldn’t, he didn’t remember doing it but he knew he’d promised he wouldn’t. That he’d promised someone, someones that he would live. 

Days turned into months at the house not seeing another soul. And in those months he’d found one thing that told him everything and nothing at once. It was a document. The deed to the house and on it there was his own name and six others. Names he couldn’t recall ever knowing. The memories of before still blurry and when he tried to recall them they hurt, almost as much as staring at the full moon. Almost as much as looking at the tattoo on his ankle, black and white and much more powerful than he’d first thought. 

In ways it felt like the tattoo tied him to the moon and its cycle. He always watched it cross the sky, feeling its approach in his bones. Like it was missing, like a part of him was there in it. A part of him that was currently missing. So he lived his life by the moon for a few months, planting and growing life around him as he lived simply. Its light lighting his life. At the same time it brought nightmares to his dreams that had been, so far, forgettable. 

He’d never forget the first night he woke screaming in the house, dripping sweat, and crying. Clutching his ankle and feeling something that was once there was gone. Wasn’t just missing, but gone. He hadn’t fallen back asleep that night, instead cutting firewood well into the early morning as he cried. The ache in him to know growing but waning in the same way the moon cycled. His eyes ever following its path. 

Nothing hurt like his sixth full moon in the house. He was unable to sleep, unable to look away from the glowing white body in the sky. Unable to stop himself from trying to remember, to stop living day to day in a haze of whats. That night for the first time in he didn’t know how long he didn’t cry at the painful ache within himself as he remembered. He let go and thought only of those names he’d read on the deed countless times. Trying to recall them. Trying to recall himself. 

A wolf’s howl sounded in his soul as he stared, six months of living like someone he wasn’t ached at the sound. His bones hurt, his heart wrenched, and his soul felt torn. The howl was from his memories. Memories of fur, painful rearranging of his own body and teeth sharp and powerful in his own mouth. He had to run his tongue along them to make sure he was still human when the memory ended, leaving him staring at the moon in a rocking chair on the porch. Jooheon wasn’t sure what it was he’d remembered but it pulled at him as the moon cycled again. 

It seemed that only the full moon could bring out his true memories as he tried unsuccessfully to remember any other time. Even though the dreams intensified filling with screams, howls, faces he didn’t know. Faces he needed, with every fiber of his being, to know. Dreams that always left him waking with a longing he could not fulfill. Dreams that had him drifting through the house touching the clothes of people who were strangers. Strangers that he knew, he knew he should know.

Living hurt even with so few memories Jooheon could barely contain the hurt he felt as he waited for the full moon. The memories piling up slowly spelling out a picture he wasn’t sure he wanted to see. One month to two had given him the knowledge that he was once a wolf, once a man who changed with the cycle of the moon. It made him wonder about his tattoo and if that was its meaning. He feared it wasn’t, and he feared to know but he had to. 

Month three of drawing out memories of the moon made him stronger. The memories this time of being here, bringing the clothes here and not being alone. He couldn’t see who he had been with but he could remember laughing, living, and loving. A feeling that warmed him that night and hardened his resolve to know. To face the truth, even though he knew it would be the most painful thing he’d ever done. Would ever do most likely. Yet Jooheon knew he had to do it. 

He set aside the time to draw, drawing his own tattoo with differences of where the center was arranging them on the desk in his room. He wasn’t sure why but he knew this tattoo was at the center of everything. Had always been at the center of everything. He drew his own last setting it in the middle looking down at them as he stared at the crescent moon through his window. There wasn’t a bedroom in the house that couldn’t see the moon. It was important that the moonlight see them, that they see it. As werewolves it was their god. 

A god he beseeched as he felt the tears start. He’d put names on the desk, six of them alongside his own. Unconsciously he’d lined them up with different tattoos while he’d been praying to the moon. The alignment made him sob harder as he took a seat at the only chair in the room, prepared as he’d ever be to face the truth. The real truth of who he was beyond Jooheon, the werewolf who ran, the werewolf who lived. For that was all he could think of himself as from the dreams. 

For a moment he wondered if it would work, if the magic he felt from the tattoo was imagined. And maybe the dreams were just dreams, maybe the memories of changing were just fantasies because he was lonely. But he knew something was missing, had been missing for too long already. And maybe, he had conceded to himself it wasn’t just missing but gone. 

Then he was thrown back as if watching himself, as if watching them in replay. A look into the past through a circle made by the tattoos on his desk. Magic of moonlight he knew but it still took his breath away to see it. To watch as the faces he didn’t know, hadn’t remembered came into view and he knew them. He knew them so well it made his heart squeeze painfully in his chest. Each room that would have been theirs as familiar as his own now. 

Shownu was shown first his face handsome and tan, creased with worries. While Wonho with his hulking muscles looked just as worried but committed to action. Minhyuk and his disheveled hair was a frantic motion of movement and chatter dancing around their safehouse. Kihyun was fretting over the supplies his small hands worrying a stone between them. Then there was Changkyun, by his side helping him unpack bags of their clothes. It pinched at something inside him to see himself like that, out of body. 

He remembered they were packing up the safehouse for their return. They had been running, were still running in this moment at least. From who it was hard to recall but the familiar faces, the love he felt in that moment, that he still felt now coursed through him. It was almost enough to end the link to the view the moon had given him. Almost but not quite. He needed to know. He had to know. So he watched as the scene changed before his eyes. Watching himself and who he knew, had always known somewhere inside, were his pack. His mates. 

The scene shifted to them being stopped, a routine stop on the road the soldier had said. It had ended in a fight, one that they had lost. Guns pointed and tranquilizers used. It made Jooheon’s breath race watching it, his body remembering different parts of that moment in different ways. Like the way Kihyun had clutched his hand as they fell to the ground his eyes lost and unfocused. The feeling of Shownu’s last growl vibrating through the air and calling to their wolves inside them. But it was far too late. 

Next was the facility. They weren’t separated but they were drugged, chained, and treated a lot more like lab rats than people. There was a doctor, or a PHD holding person there who looked ratty with beady eyes and too much interest. Jooheon shivered watching as that man approached each of their beds. Remembering the feel of the needle in his own arm as he watched it happen through the viewer. Watched it happen to all of them. Watched himself, them, scream in pain and writhe in agony and their veins bulge with whatever they’d been given. He watched the scene repeat, over and over, and over. 

It felt like a sickeningly fast merry go round as the door opened and closed on the ratty man. Different concoctions in his hands each time. None of them truly able to speak for longer than a few seconds each day with the pain they were in. It echoed along his body now and he wondered how he’d ever been able to run. How he’d been able to escape. Where his mates were. Why they were missing. 

Each of their tattoos was visible in the viewer as well, each glowing a silver color in the few bits of rest they were allowed. Love the only word they expressed when their lips moved. Other memories of before filled the back of Jooheon’s mind. Of finding a place to belong, a place he was loved, a place they all loved one another. But the scenes before him were getting worse. They’d cut into Wonho, seeing fur inside his body and proceeded to poke and prod while past Jooheon and current Jooheon watched. Felt. 

It was torture all over again. Watching as they did the same to the rest of them. Until they reached past Jooheon, he had the least fur in his body. The ratty man proclaimed a success and said they’d be moved soon. Jooheon listened and remembered as that statement had brought hope of escape. Now it only brought him pain as he watched their attempt. Changkyun had gotten free first, after another dose of a concoction they’d used before. They said it was a cure that would help all of mankind. A cure they hadn’t asked any of them if they wanted to help make. 

Still, he watched as Changkyun freed the rest. Kihyun and Shownu pulling apart machines as Wonho was helped by Hyungwon. His body didn’t heal the way it used to. None of them did but each took it differently. Minhyuk was barely breathing towards the end with his mouth gagged and too many needles in him. They’d freed him and Jooheon had led them out of the room. What followed next was his nightmares. Guns, fire, too many people and too many faces in his own. The ratty man screaming to not let them escape.

The worst was watching Minhyuk fall, then Wonho unable to stand and flee. Watching as Shownu and Kihyun screamed at him to go on. Feeling it as Changkyun was shot through the heart. The terror of the moment he saw an escape and the torture of Hyungwon pushing him towards it even as his leg caught a bullet. The blood across Shownu’s face as he turned, the only one still able, and viciously tore apart the ratty man. It was too much to watch, but he had to know. Minhyuk had given him the final shove. One word on his lips. ‘Live.’

Jooheon heard a scream echo around the room chased by another, raw, angry, and anguished. He could feel it now. The rips in his soul, the missing pieces and everything he’d ever wanted gone from him. Because he remembered. The facility itself had a device to wipe the memories of those there which was why he couldn’t recall before. And now that he could he wondered if he should. The tears kept streaming down his face because what he had lost wasn’t missing, it was gone. So far gone, and so was he. 

It only took him a few days to find his own solution. He remembered the name of the company that had taken them. He remembered the ratty man’s name and his boss, who had only shown up once. A few ‘well dones’ and a face that had looked over him when a ‘cure’ was found. There was only one logical solution. Minhyuk had told him to live, the others had wanted him to live. They hadn’t told him not to live for revenge. But he would, oh but he would he decided as he made his way to town. This company would never know what hit them. For the children of the moon bathed in blood and they shouldn’t have taken his loves.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you didn't cry. It hurt me too.
> 
> Edited. Seriously though in my head Jooheon turns punisher. Js.


End file.
